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Transnational Organized Crime and National Security: Hezbollah, Hackers and Corruption
American law enforcement efforts have become increasingly multifaceted as the government attempts to combat the continuing ingenuity and sophistication of transnational organized criminal groups. Eric Halliday writes in Lawfare that the U.S. government has announced several significant actions taken against transnational organized crime groups. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) promulgated a slew of sanctions against the financial networks of both Hezbollah and Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). The Justice Department announced takedowns of drug trafficking rings spanning the U.S. and Mexico as well as a large-scale organized cybercrime ring composed of members from several Eastern European countries.
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Why Terrorists Sometimes Apologize for Their Actions
Armed groups often rely on violence and instilling fear to show strength and resilience. And yet, every so often, they are willing to apologize when things go wrong. The New IRA recently apologized for killing Lyra McKee, an investigative journalist, during a riot in Derry. The group’s targets, which they described as “enemy forces,” were officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. As scholars of conflict, we both study a variety of armed groups, from nationalist and separatist liberation movements to Islamist opposition groups. Ioana Emy Matesan and Ronit Berger write in the National Interest that over time, comparing anecdotes turned into a systematic investigation of armed attacks, in order to address an understudied question: Do rebel groups ever apologize for their mistakes? If such groups were ever willing to apologize for their actions, we wanted to understand when and why they would do so. We hoped it would help us find ways to negotiate resolutions during conflicts.
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How Fake News Could Lead to Real War
Who really bombed the oil tankers in the Persian Gulf two weeks ago? Was it Iran, as the Trump administration assured us? Or was it Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Israel—or some combination of the three? Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write in Politico that they believe in the official U.S. position, that Iran was behind the attacks, trying to prod other countries to pressure the U.S. to relax its sanctions makes sense. But the whole unsettling episode opened our eyes to a deeply troubling reality: The current fake news epidemic isn’t just shaking up U.S. politics; it might end up causing a war, or just as consequentially, impeding a national response to a genuine threat. Thus far, public discussion of deep fakes—and fake news more broadly—has focused on domestic politics and particularly elections. That was inevitable after the Russian interference on President Donald Trump’s behalf in 2016—the dimensions of which were laid out in the unprecedented joint assessment of the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation in February 2017 and the Mueller Report.
But fake news’ implications for foreign and security policy may be as far-reaching—and even more dangerous. Misinformation in geopolitics could lead not only to the continued weakening of our institutions but also to combat deaths. Sure, fake news has been a feature of international relations for a long time, but it’s different now: “Advancing technology that can fabricate convincing images and videos combined with the chronic, exuberant dishonesty of the commander-in-chief and his minions has meant that no one can feel confident in assessing life or death choices in foreign policy crisis. For a democracy—one with global interests—this is a disaster,” Benjamin and Simon write. -
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Pentagon Report: Russian Leaders Believe They Are Already at War with the United States—in the Gray Zone
A group of governmental, military, and outside experts published a white paper urging the US government to jump fully into the so-called gray zone—the conceptual space in which countries take action that lies somewhere on the continuum between warfare and peaceable relations. Russia, they say, is exploiting it effectively. It’s in the gray zone that Russia meddles with elections, launches online disinformation campaigns, and uses a host of other means to gain greater leverage in places ranging from the former Soviet states to Latin America. Matt Field, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, notes that Russia’s already doing well in this sub-military conflict space. He quotes Nicole Peterson, who writes in the report’s executive summary: “Overall, Russia’s influence abroad is growing, and the Kremlin has mastered the use of ‘hybrid warfare’ in driving Russia’s foreign policy… Russia utilizes a variety of gray zone tactics around the globe. These include the use of paramilitary forces and other proxies, interference in political processes, economic and energy exploitation (particularly in Africa), espionage, and media and propaganda manipulation.”
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Europe Built a System to Fight Russian Meddling. It’s Struggling.
The European Union launched an ambitious effort earlier this year to combat election interference: an early-warning system that would sound alarms about Russian propaganda. Despite high expectations, however, records show that the system has become a repository for a mishmash of information, produced no alerts and is already at risk of becoming defunct. Matt Apuzzo writes in the New York Times that Europe’s early struggles offer lessons for other nations, including the United States, where intelligence officials expect Russia to try to interfere in next year’s presidential election. In many ways, the European Union has been more aggressive than Washington in demanding changes from social media companies and seeking novel ways to fight disinformation. Efforts to identify and counter disinformation have proven not only deeply complicated, but also politically charged.
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Could Secret Cables Have Saved Ethel Rosenberg From the Electric Chair?
At 8:11 on the evening of June 19, 1953, Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the electric chair at the New York State prison known as Sing Sing. She was 37 years old and the mother of two young sons. The chair, made of oak and iron, had killed hundreds of convicted criminals over the years, including her husband, Julius Rosenberg, a few minutes before. But the chair was not always reliable, which was one reason inmates gave it the cynical name “Old Sparky.” Christopher Dickey writes in the Daily Beast that two years earlier, when both Rosenbergs were convicted of spying for Moscow, Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman had handed down their death sentences. The Rosenbergs’ crime, he said, was “worse than murder.” But in fact the penalty was not about justice. It was about vengeance for a loss the American public felt was so enormous that someone must be made to pay a horrible price. It was “as if a society turned its magnifying lens on these people until they caught fire and were burned alive,” said novelist E. L. Doctorow, whose The Book of Daniel was a fictional account of the case. “Even as Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the electric chair for spying for Moscow in 1953, decrypted cables might have spared her. But they were released only decades later,” Dickey writers.
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Huawei CVs Show Close Links with Military, Study Says
A study of the employment information of thousands of Huawei staff has revealed deeper links with the Chinese military and intelligence apparatus than those previously acknowledged by China’s biggest telecom equipment maker. The findings are likely to add fuel to the debate among governments around the world over whether to block Huawei’s gear from the rollout of 5G telecoms networks for security reasons. Kathrin Hille writes in the Financial Times that The findings are likely to add fuel to the debate among governments around the world over whether to block Huawei’s gear from the rollout of 5G telecoms networks for security reasons. “Huawei has gone to great lengths saying they have no links with the Chinese military and security institutions,” said Prof. Balding. “The narrative they spin is false — military connections quite clearly run deep.” Analysts said the systemically close ties documented in the study reflected a pattern far beyond Huawei. One expert said such sharing or co-ordination of personnel across defense and commercial research activities was consistent with China’s national strategy for military-civil fusion.
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DHS Chief Orders Probe of Agents' Offensive Facebook Posts
DHS secretary on Wednesday ordered an immediate investigation into a report that current and former U.S. Border Patrol agents are part of a Facebook group that posts racist, sexist and violent comments about migrants and Latin American lawmakers.
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Mexicans in U.S. Routinely Confront Legal Abuse, Racial Profiling, ICE Targeting and Other Civil Rights Violations
Officially, the Constitution of the United States gives everyone on U.S. soil equal protection under the law – regardless of nationality or legal status. But, as recent stories of the neglectful treatment of migrant children in government detention centers demonstrate, these civil rights are not always granted to immigrants.
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Populist Eurosceptic parties do not gain support in response to terrorist attacks
New research has found that terrorist attacks in Europe don’t increase support for populist parties. In fact, people in Germany became more positive towards the EU after the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack in that country, the researchers found.
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Germany Has a Neo-Nazi Terrorism Epidemic
Tanjev Schultz, a professor of journalism at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and the author of a prizewinning book about right-wing terrorism in Germany, says that in Germany’s public imagination terrorism tends to be associated with the left. Memories of the Red Army Faction and the series of political assassinations it undertook are still in the foreground of many Germans’ minds. Meanwhile, neofascistic terrorist attacks like the bombing of a Munich beer garden in 1980 have been largely forgotten. Peter Kuras writes in Foreign Policy that Schultz told him that this blindness to right-wing terrorism is one of the reasons that it took authorities so long to recognize that the 10 murders carried out by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) beginning in 2000 were the work of a terrorist organization. Indeed, as Jacob Kushner has documented in Foreign Policy, authorities largely tried to restrict the investigation into the group’s three core members, Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt, and Beate Zschäpe, despite the fact that there was strong evidence that they had substantial support from other right-wing extremists, as well as some indication that some of that support may have come from within the government.
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Bipartisan, Bicameral Legislation to Tackle Rising Threat of Deepfakes
New bipartisan bill would require DHS secretary to publish annual report on the state of digital content forgery. “Deepfakes pose a serious threat to our national security, homeland security, and the integrity of our elections,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington), one of the bill’s sponsors.
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Al-Qaeda Is Stronger Today than It Was on 9/11
Despite a United States-led global “war on terror” that has cost $5.9 trillion, killed an estimated 480,000 to 507,000 people and assassinated bin Laden, al-Qaeda has grown and spread since 9/11, expanding from rural Afghanistan into North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, the Gulf States, the Middle East and Central Asia. In those places, al-Qaeda has developed new political influence – in some areas even supplanting the local government.
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White Supremacists Increase College Campus Recruiting Efforts for Third Straight Year
White supremacist propaganda distribution on college campuses increased for the third straight year, according to data released today by ADL. 2019 spring semester saw more extremist propaganda on campus than any preceding semester, with 161 incidents on 122 different campuses across 33 states and the District of Columbia.
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Pentagon White Paper Says U.S. Underestimating Russia's Aggression
A Pentagon white paper says the U.S. is underestimating the scope of Russia’s aggression. The document was shared with Politico, which reported on it Sunday. Chris Mills Rodrigo writes in The Hilss that the paper, which was prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the Pentagon and independent strategists, Russian efforts to undermine democracies. The study points to Russia’s use of propaganda and disinformation to sway public opinion across Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. It also highlights the danger of alignment between Russia and China, both of which fear the United States’ international alliances and share an affinity for “authoritarian stability.” The study recommends the State Department spearhead “influence operations,” including sowing divisions between Moscow and Beijing.
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More headlines
The long view
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference in democracies has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, the tactical tools authoritarian actors use to undermine democracy include cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and civil society subversion.
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.
Trump Aims to Shut Down State Climate Policies
President Donald Trump has launched an all-out legal attack on states’ authority to set climate change policy. Climate-focused state leaders say his administration has no legal basis to unravel their efforts.
Vaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity
Sidestepping both the FDA’s own Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two Trump-appointed FDA leaders penned an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine to announce new, more restrictive, COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Critics say that not seeking broad input into the new policy, which would help FDA to understand its implications, feasibility, and the potential for unintended consequences, amounts to policy by proclamation.
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”